Students know that throughout their lives they will make economic decisions and be influenced by economic forces. They want to understand the economic principles that can help them navigate these forces and guide their decisions. Essential Foundations of Economics is our attempt to satisfy this want.

The response to our earlier editions from hundreds of colleagues across the United States and throughout the world tells us that most of you agree with our view that to achieve its goals, the principles course must do four things well. It must

• Motivate with compelling issues and questions
• Focus on core ideas
• Steer a path between an overload of detail and too much left unsaid
• Encourage and aid learning by doing

The Foundations icon with its four blocks (on the cover and throughout the book) symbolizes this four-point approach that has guided all our choices in writing this text and creating its comprehensive teaching and learning supplements.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE SIXTH EDITION

The extraordinary events in the U.S. and global economies provide a rich display of economic forces in action through which students can be motivated to discover the economic way of thinking. The global financial crisis, slump, and faltering recovery; ongoing tensions that result from globalization and international outsourcing; the continued spectacular expansion of China and India in the information-age economy; enhanced concern about climate change; relentless pressure on the federal budget from the demands of an aging population and increased defense and homeland security expenditures; the dilemma posed by slow recovery and rising government debt; and the ever-growing federal budget deficit and national debt are just a few of these interest-arousing events. All of them feature at the appropriate points in our new edition, and the text and examples are all thoroughly updated to reflect the most recently available data and events.

Every chapter contains many small changes, all designed to enhance clarity and currency. We have also made a few carefully selected major changes that we describe below.

New Features

We have simplified the chapter openers to grab student attention and provide instant focus for the chapter. Each chapter opens with a question about a central issue that the chapter addresses and is illustrated with a carefully selected photograph. An Eye On box returns to and discusses the question and an end-of-chapter problem, that is also in the MyEconLab Homework and Test Manager, makes the issue available for assignment with automatic grading. This feature enables the student to get the point of the chapter quickly; ties the chapter together; and enables the instructor to focus on a core issue in class and for practice. The Chapter Checkpoint (the last three pages of each chapter) has been thoroughly revised. The first page contains problems and applications for the student to work, which are replicated in the MyEconLab Study Plan. The second page contains problems and applications for the instructor to assign for homework, quiz, or test. Many of these problems and applications are new to the sixth edtion and include mini case studies from recent news stories. The third page contains a short multiple choice quiz. This quiz, also available in MyEconLab for student practice, hits the high points of the chapter and enables students to test themselves on the types of questions they are likely to encounter on tests and exams.

The Checkpoints at the end of each major section of a chapter have been reorganized to separate practice with basic analysis and “In the News” applications. Worked solutions are provided for both types of questions.